Vargarian Guard
The Vargarian Guard is a Renegade Grand Company of the notoriously ruthless Iron Warriors Traitor Legion. They are a particularly grim and unforgiving Grand Company of the Iron Warriors that have taken their Legion beliefs in inner strength and coldblooded pragmatism to its logical conclusion. To the Vargarians, Chaos is a tool - in the complete sense of the word: The power of the Immaterium, its denizens, and ultimately - even the gods themselves - are viewed as little more than resources to be subjugated, exploited, and enslaved. Worship or reverence to the gods in any shape or form is considered unforgivingly weak. They are a highly assault-focused force that favours massive armored assaults supported by daemon engines and mechanized infantry. A highly organized and mobile army, they have plagued the Imperium of Man for millennia on end, and was known to have fought in many of the Warmaster’s Black Crusades; before shaking off his shackles and going rogue. Led by Warsmith Alaric Hulderic, it now fights to carve out its own Empire, in the very fringes of Segmentum Obscurus. Cold, calculating & pragmatic to the extreme, the Vargarians will stop at nothing until the false Emperor has been overthrown, the corpse of his Imperium torn asunder, and their Chaos rivals crushed utterly and completely. History Founding Raised in the wake of the Lord of Iron’s desolation of the IVth, the Guard was one of the first Grand Companies to be raised from the Primarch’s homeworld of Olympia; and it was, in essence, a bloodied answer to their gene-father’s disappointment. Recruits were drawn from all the societal castoffs of the planet: Orphans, street urchins, slaves – expendable recruits, with no personal loyalties, or ambitions. Men that could easily be stripped of their former lives and molded through conditioned into unflinching and unforgiving instruments of war. Aspirants were conditioned through word and lash to be relentless, controlled and calculating. Emotions were a hindrance. Personal honour, glory and even survival were irrelevant, all that mattered was victory for the legion. The Great Crusade The Vargarians were to draw first blood in the brutal war on the Black Judges. The Black Judges were a technologically-advanced civilization that used forbidden tech from the Dark Age of Technology to extend their lives for thousands of years. Their shriveled and time-ravaged forms were encased in mechanized war machines, controlled by cybernetic implants. They were a dark legend on Olympia, and were said to have slaughtered and enslaved tens of thousands the last time they preyed on the planet. When the Lord of Iron took command of his Iron Warriors Legion, his first campaign was to settle accounts by launching a preemptive strike into the heart of their domain - and the Vargarians were just the tip of his spear. After the brutal void-battle, the fleet of the IV broke through the blockade line of warships, and started their main assault on the heart of the Judge's civilization: The Rock of Judgement. With the Judges’ orbital defense line broken, the IV Legion fleet pushed forward, using the armoured bows of their largest capital ships to weather the storm of ground fire and force a landing. The First of the Vargarians’ heavily-armored companies were also the first to make planetfall, surging forward, methodically eliminating all resistance in a storm of energy blasts, while, in their wake, came wave after wave of mobile assault guns and artillery, whose concentrated shellfire shattered and brought down defensive bastions, burying gun-emplacements and pillboxes in mountains of rubble. Such was the ferocity of this rolling advance that it stunned the Black Judges’ defenders, who could not comprehend what was happening anymore. The shock did not last, however, and the Black Judges mounted a massive counter-attack. Their massive, armored, life-sustaining exoskeletons sprang to life, as did their razor scourges and ray cannons, which were the equal of a Dreadnought in firepower -- and there were hundreds of them. Against the onslaught of these mechanical monsters, the warriors of the Vargarian Guard held fast, but it cost them dearly, as they swiftly dropped in their numbers - cut into bloody ribbons, or incinerated in the molten coffins of their tanks, or, worse yet, power armor. The bulk of the Legion was landing in the wake of the Vargarian offensive in tens of thousands, massive troop carriers and transports were landing in the secure rear of their lines, disembarking and immediately setting up massive defensive perimeters around their beachhead. Knowing they had to delay the Judges’ counteroffensive just a little longer, the heavy tanks concentrated their fire onto the flanks of their opponents’ retinues, forcing their advancing units to close-up ranks and split off, to counter the armor, as they assaulted the Vargarian lines. Dismounted Vargarian legionaries rallied, again and again, charging in calculated suicide attacks into the tightly-packed masses of the assaulting Judges, planting krak-grenades on their mechanical joints, or detonating melta-bombs, point-blank, on their hulls. Despite their massive losses, the Black Judges were relentlessly pressing on and were starting to gather momentum - as for every one of them that fell, a dozen or more Astartes were paying the same price. It was then that the Lord of Iron struck. Entering the battle personally, he had been observing the battle closely, and had anticipated the veracity of the counterattack. In their desperation to regain the initiative, the Judges had overcommitted to the offensive, and in doing so, left massive vulnerabilities in their lines. The Hammer of Olympia, and his elite Guard, struck the exposed flanks of the Black Judges, like a hammer on an anvil, throwing them into utter disarray. Like a mythical Titan, he smashed on their exposed lines, ripping their machine limbs and frames apart, tearing out the quivering bodies from their coffins with his own hands. The commanding Judges reeled in panic and sought to realign their offensive to face this new threat - a move also anticipated in the Lord of Iron's battle plans. The bulk of the IVth Legion now pressed forward, as the new, Elite Havoc heavy weapon units advanced in precisely-coordinated attack patterns, supported by the full might of the IVth’s firepower. They annihilated the remaining Judges. By Perturabo's will, the Judges were killed to the last remaining cog, and their planets stripped of every valuable resource and technology. The Vargarians had had their baptism of fire in an ocean of blood. Organisation Warband Beliefs Iron Within, Iron Without The Vargarian Guard are a particularly grim Grand Company of the Iron Warriors that have taken their Legion beliefs in inner strength and coldblooded pragmatism to its extreme. To the Vargarian, the ultimate sin is weakness - a warrior's strength proceeded only from within himself, from his indomitable will, his strength of character, and inner fortitude. He views his weapon as being merely an extension of this, for it is held that the weapon is only as strong as the hand that wields it. So it it can rightly be said that the Iron within indeed wields the iron without. Pragmatically Chaos So absolute is their belief in inner strength that any kind of supplication, worship, or reverence of the gods is considered the height of weakness. A Warrior’s strength is derived from his own unbreakable will, not borrowed, bartered, or purchased from gods, daemons, or an undead tyrant. Chaos is thus viewed a tool in the complete sense of the word: The powers of the Immaterium, its denizens, and ultimately even the gods themselves are viewed as little more than resources to be exploited, subjugated, and enslaved. Daemons are despised and viewed as little more than beast of burden on whose backs the Vargarians will build their new Iron Empire. Indeed, the Warpsmiths and Sorcerors of the Company have so honed and mastered the arts of daemonmancy that they are able to bind and enslave even some greater daemons for use in their growing army of Daemon Engines. As such, they viewed their genefather’s apotheosis to daemonhood with complete disgust. To them, it represented a complete betrayal of everything the Iron Warriors stood for - that the Lord of Iron had been so weak that he sold himself into servitude of the gods for borrowed power was unforgivable. It was thus inevitable that they would go rogue and shake off the shackles of their former genefather and Legion. Warband Doctrine Warband Gene-Seed Notable Members Warband Fleet Warband Relics Warband Appearance Warband Colours Warband Iconography Warband Relations Allies Please feel feel free to add your own Enemies Imperium of Man The Black Legion Notable Quotes By the Vargarian Guard About the Vargarian Guard Category:Chaos Category:Chaos Space Marines Category:Iron Warriors Successors